Björn Brembs

Just before Christmas 2019, the Washington Post
[reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-department-investigates-sci-hub-founder-on-suspicion-of-working-for-russian-intelligence/2019/12/19/9dbcb6e6-2277-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html),
based on "people familiar with the matter", that the US Justice
Department were investigating the Sci-Hub founder [Alexandra
Elbakyan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Elbakyan) for
potentially "working with Russian intelligence to steal U.S. military
secrets from defense contractors". Besides such a highly unusual
connection, the article also reiterated unsubstantiated (but mainly
circulated by publishers) allegations that access to scholarly journals
was obtained via her 'hacking' skills. The article also cited a "former
senior U.S. intelligence official" that he believed Elbakyan was working
with the Russian foreign intelligence service GRU. Apparently, the
investigation had been ongoing since 2014, but now, in 2020, there is
still no publicly available evidence as to what this investigation has
been able to find.

And yet, despite no evidence, on the very next day after the Washington
Post story, Elsevier was all too happy to find their oft-repeated but
little-believed claims of Sci-Hub being dangerous vindicated and
[exclaimed](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/allegations-linking-sci-hub-with-russian-intelligence)
"This represents a threat to academic institutions". Elsevier, after
winning a lawsuit that failed to materialize any of the millions it
sought, finally had external support to bolster their claims that
Sci-Hub was not only a threat to their bottom line, but to research
integrity!

Less than two months later, Nick Fowler, chief academic officer at
Elsevier,
[announced](https://www.researchinformation.info/analysis-opinion/working-together-protect-cyber-attacks)
the new *Scholarly Networks Security Initiative* (SNSI), under the title
"Working together to protect from cyber attacks". Fowler was assisted by
SpringerNature chief publishing officer Steven Inchcoombe. Both
introduced themselves as co-chairs of SNSI. One aspect mentioned in the
article was that "Awareness of the damage Sci-Hub is inflicting on
institutions and academia needs to be increased." The idea being that
publishers and institutional libraries work together to fight a common
enemy.

This public relations aspect of the SNSI is what needs to receive
special attention. On the face of it, Sci-Hub is an enabling technology:
before Sci-Hub, scholars needed subscriptions to access the scholarly
literature; now, subscriptions have become optional. In many countries,
this has led to new initiatives and consortia finally toughening their
stance in library-publisher negotiations. What in the previous three
decades was a walk in the park, followed by ever climbing profit margins
now stands to be a tough negotiation. Sci-Hub thus has had opposite
effects on libraries and publishers: while libraries need not fear
lapses of access as much as previously, allowing them to be bolder in
their negotiations, publishers wonder why anybody should pay for their
offerings at all, if their customers can have all the scholarly content
of the world for free.

When it turned out that the lawsuits against Elbakyan would neither lead
to any damages being paid nor have a deterring effect on libraries or
their patrons, and when initiatives asking for a tougher stance against
publishers garnered more and more support, publishers devised a new
strategy. They would try and paint Sci-Hub not only as a threat for
them, but also for the libraries. Rumors started spreading
unsubstantiated claims that Sci-Hub had obtained their
login-credentials, with which they were populating their databases, not
by donations, but by phishing attacks. As there was no evidence, there
was little uptake or discussion. One may assume that with Sci-Hub being
around since 2011, noticeable consequences on library behavior starting
around 2012/13, by 2017/18, when the phishing rumors failed to gain
traction, publishers must have been fairly frustrated that their usual
power over academics seemed on the decline for the first time in
decades.

Perhaps the feeling of frustration was similar around 2005, when the
Open Access movement, invigorated by the Budapest (2001) and Berlin
(2003)
[declarations](https://pitt.libguides.com/openaccess/oadeclarations),
continued to garner steam. Also then, the publishers' attempts at
painting Open Access to scholarly works as a threat to research
integrity failed to rouse support and slow the momentum of the OA
movement. Just before the launch of the NIH OA mandate in the US, the
American Association of Publishers (AAP) decided they needed something
that would really get their message across and in 2006
[started](https://www.nature.com/articles/445347a) the Partnership for
Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) Coalition\*. They
[hired](https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/09/background-on-aap-hiring-of-eric.html)
"the pit bull of public relations", Eric Dezenhall, to create a smear
campaign hat would strive to equate public access with junk science. In
particular with regard to OA mandates, part of the plan was for
publishers to partner with anti-science organizations, which shared
their anti-government sentiment. The aim was to bring institutions on
board to save research integrity together with the publishers.

Thus, in both instances, public access to scholarly works (whether via
OA or Sci-Hub) posed only a threat to publishers and in both instances,
the publishers sought to paint themselves as chiefly concerned not about
their bottom line but about "research integrity". Compare the statement
on the [PRISM
website](https://web.archive.org/web/20081103024440/https://www.prismcoalition.org/):

> The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM)
> was formed to advocate for policies that ensure the quality,
> integrity, and economic viability of peer-reviewed journals.

with statements on the [SNSI site](https://www.snsi.info/):

> Scholarly Networks Security Initiative (SNSI) brings together
> publishers and institutions to solve cyber-challenges threatening the
> integrity of the scientific record, scholarly systems and the safety
> of personal data.

This past week, these public relations efforts were dialed up a notch or
ten to a whole new level. At an SNSI webinar entitled [„Cybersecurity
Landscape -- Protecting the Scholarly
Infrastructure"](https://www.snsi.info/news-and-events/cybersecurity-landscape/),
hosted by two Elsevier employees, one of the presenters suggested to
„develop or subsidize a low cost proxy or a plug-in to existing proxies"
in order to collect user data. That user data, it was explained, could
be analyzed with an "Analysis Engine" to track biometric data (e.g.,
typing speed) or suspicious behavior (e.g., a pharmacology student being
suspiciously interested in astrophysics). The angle towards Sci-Hub was
confirmed by the next speaker, an Ex-FBI agent and security analyst.

Considering the track record of academic publishers, this reeks strongly
of PR attempts to 'soften the target', i.e., to make installing
publisher spyware on university servers sound less outrageous than it
actually is. After the PRISM debacle, the publishers now seem to have
learned from their PR mistakes. This time, there is no 'pitbull' around.
This time, there is only a strange article in a major newspaper, a shady
institute where it appears hard to find out who founded it, who is
running it and who funds it.

SNSI is an apparent PR project aimed at compromising, not strengthening,
network security at research institutions. However, unlike with PRISM,
this time the PR effort may pay off.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

\* It has to be noted that one of the AAP publishers in the PRISM
Coalition was Elsevier, who had so much disdain for research integrity
that they had published a
[nine](https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/elsevier-fake-journal-tally-now-9.html)
[fake](https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/elsevier-published-6-fake-journals-44160)
[journals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Fake_journals) from
2000 until 2005. In other words, in one year, they stop publishing their
fake journals, in the next, they join a PR campaign in which research
integrity is the central tenet.


Just before Christmas 2019, the Washington Post reported, based on “people familiar with the matter”, that the US Justice Department were investigating the Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan for potentially “working with Russian intelligence to steal U.S. military secrets from defense contractors”. Besides such a highly unusual connection, the article also reiterated unsubstantiated (but mainly circulated by publishers) allegations that access

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Is the SNSI the new PRISM?